The Lazy Sonnet and other activities (?)

Melissa: I loved that you had students up on their feet with props yesterday. I think it would be good to have a post (that everyone can edit/add to) with day-to-day Shakespeare activities. How do you check for comprehension? What's a new way of summarizing a scene? Quick intro activities that worked well? Spice things up? etc.

Here's one I just came across:

The Lazy Sonnet
Have students write a 14-word sonnet summarazing an act, where the final couplet rhymes.
This could also be done for a scene. Ask them to focus on character, incident and theme.

For example, Act I, R&J:

Capulet
hates
Montague.
Montague
hates
Capulet.
Families
fight.
Citizens
cheer.
Prince
comes.
Double
trouble.

Pretty & Free & Searchable: Folger etext

Look what I just found! A great way for students to access Shakespeare at home on their laptops in a beautiful format from our friends at Folger. Click here!

You can also download the etext in PDF format... A great way to print up sections for students to annotate without standing at the photocopier!

Willy S Help from Folger

Since our Folger books aren't arriving until next fall, check out their amazing website of resources for various play.
MB: Here´s R&J.
Melissa: Here's Midsummer. 
Click on Lesson Plan Archives to find lots of ideas.

Wordle this.

Tasha, back in the day before word clouds were a thing, I used to use this site to have students cut and paste sections of Shakespeare or any text into the generator and then write an analysis of the most important word in the section.

Searchable Texts

Melissa-- I used this site a lot last year while teaching Macbeth, but it could be equally fun (English fun, that is) with Midsummer. You can search specific Shakespeare plays for specific words in a clean format. (You can even narrow the search to a particular character.)

Global Shakespeare

Here is a link to full length Shakespeare productions around the world. Could be great for discussing interpretation.

http://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/#

 Tasha, you might want to use this for your drama class, but I'm also going to use the tableaux strategy for Midsummer , which is on the list on the right side as well. I've done it before and it's a great way to test understanding of a scene and character motivations.

http://dramaresource.com/strategies/flashbacks-and-flash-forwards

Thanks, Melissa. At a Foldger Workshop I went to last year we did a very simple but effective activity I used a lot with Macbeth and Taming last year. You start by giving pairs two lines of dialogue from the play and say that they have to be on different physical levels (one standing, one kneeling, etc.). Then, when they are presenting a short scene, you remind them to incorporate levels and even a tableau to end the scene. It's amazing how it eliminates the standing-lock-kneed-at-the-front-of-the-room-awkietown-style issue. 

I think that visual image made my day. So thank YOU.

Soundscapes Lesson 1?

Maybe a good place to start thinking about soundscapes? Ultimately, I want to get them to create a soundscape in relationship to a work that we read as a way to visualize place. It could be a good connection to our work with short stories of Japan or South America or it could also have been useful in setting up a scene from Midsummer Night's Dream but that ship has sailed. I think ideally I would like to do it with The Things They Carried when I use time more wisely and can fit all of these texts in.

http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/activity/soundscape/?ar_a=1

Literary Hybridity!

Here is an interesting video on literary hybridity which melds short film with poetry in a way that is different from visual narrative. It makes me think of my favorite genre: the mashup and what we could do with this in 9th and 10th to build understanding of intertextuality. I wonder if I could get the kids in 10th to do a hybridity project in which they either used found [visual] "texts" and mashed them with a poem or a selection of prose and then created them using Moviemaker or iMovie, and defended them like an IB Art exam. Since we just did a similar project, I will skip it this year, let it germinate and move onto... Soundscapes!!!

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21948

Poem videos

More poem videos. I liked the first one in particular to use for discussing artistic choice and interpretation.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23387?utm_source=March%3A+Film+Update&utm_campaign=march_update&utm_medium=email

Turnitin Features

These seemed like useful links! I thought maybe we could come back to the SEER piece when we talk about research papers and how we will skill build across 9th and 10th grades.

 The Source Educational Evaluation Rubric (SEER) is built on five criteria:
• Authority: Is the site well regarded, cited, and written by experts in the field?
• Educational Value: Does the site content help advance educational goals?
• Intent: Is the site a well-respected source of content intended to inform users?
• Originality: Is the site a source of original content and viewpoints?
• Quality: Is the site highly vetted with good coverage of the topical area?

SEER Evaluation Sources 

This link is just an interesting story about college admissions and how much plagiarism they are catching in application essays. Zero tolerance policy has reduced plagiarism to zero. That's some good validation.

Plagiarism in the real world

Slam Poetry Resources

Tasha's HS Student-Friendly and Favorite Slam Poem Youtube Playlist. 
27 wonderful poems by Sarah Kay, Anis Mojgani and student poets. Appropriate for high school students.

When introducing slam poetry, I will often show a few poems from this list in class, then ask students to watch three for homework and write down a quote they like from each. (They often watch all of them.) The next day, we spend a good chunk of time re-watching poems and talking about what works in each.

BBC 60 second Shakespeare videos and acting videos

Acting Shakespeare

I used this video in class today as a connection to their work with Midsummer, and particularly to help them when they set up their scenes. I also created a performance rubric that hopefully we can evaluate as a group and adopt.